Spring Break 2022

 This week was Spring Break and it has been an whirlwind.  The weather was a mixed bag, but we made the best of it everyday.  

Monday, it rained most of the day. The kids and I decided it was the perfect day for the nickel arcade, Wunderland. We spent the afternoon playing games and having a good time, Merrick got checked out by a group of girls who not so sneakily took his picture, and we walked away with some candy and cheap plastic prizes.  We finished the day with ice cream. Good time had by all.

Tuesday, the weather was amazing.  We spent the day at the park, playing in the backyard, and playing football with Brown Cousins.  The goal for the day was to spend as much time outside as possible and we did a pretty good job, even eating dinner outside for the first time this year. Also, Carrigan had been hand sewing a new tank top for herself and decided this was the perfect day to finish it and wear it out.

Wednesday, was rainy again and that was ok because I spent most of the day in the kitchen making dinner for some friends of our who are finally moving back into their house after a tree fell on it in last year's ice storm and making cookies for a funeral which Jeremy was presiding over (his first since becoming a member of our church leadership).  The girls helped me in the kitchen and Merrick and his cousins talked Nana into taking them to 50% off senior day at our local thrift shop.

Thursday, we drove out to McMinnville to the Evergreen Air and Space Museum.  We have visited Wings and Waves, the water park portion of the the experience, but this was our first time to the museum.  Really it is two separate museums and we spend several hours learning about planes (especially the Spruce Goose) and about our history with space travel.  I learned a lot, but the playground was probably the girls favorite part.

Friday, Jeremy took the day off work and we spent the day at the beach with the Browns.  We also brought Merrick's friend Arthur along for the ride because his parents were out of town.  We went to Lincoln City and played "finders keepers", looking for glass floats throughout the day.  We didn't find anything but had a fun time otherwise.  The morning started out cold but it did warm up and it ended up being a nice day.

Saturday, Jeremy conducted the funeral in the morning. I wasn't able to attend, but hear he did a great job and that it was a great service.  In the afternoon, Merrick ended the day in his element, on the mound for the first time this year.  I truly intended to take a picture, but I forgot how never racking it is watching him pitch and I completely forgot.  He did great on his first outing and I am looking forward to a great season ahead.

That brings us to today.  Spring Break 2022 is in the books. Today is all about church, rest, and preparing for the week ahead.  Tomorrow is going to be a hard crash back into the real world.

State Tournament 2 and Sledding Fun

This week I decided to drop the "New Life" title after 102 weeks.  For those reading this years down the road, only time will tell if that is premature, but for now, life feels almost as close to the old normal as I think it will ever feel again.  Again,  time will tell.

Last week I neglected to get a blog written.  We finished the state tournament (more on that in a moment) about 3:30 and headed home.  We should have made it home by about 6:30 but unfortunately we ignored the warnings on our GPS to change courses about 40 mins from home and suddenly came to a dead stop.  The next 2 hours were rough.  The freeway was apocalyptic with the side of road littered with seemingly empty (I am sure the drivers were in back) semis and cars parked as far as the eye could see.  What was the cause you ask? Cows! A tractor trailer carrying like 30 cows got in an accident and consequently let the cows loose on the freeway.  We arrived on the scene 2 hours after the incident had taken place and, obviously, it was still a mess.  Anyway, we did eventually make it home.

And now, without further ado, the state tournament recap.  Day one, we had two games.  The first game, we led pretty significantly most of the game, then, at the end of the second half, we pushed the self-destruct button.  We ended up losing by 1 in a game we definitely should have won.  The second game was a very similar story.  We led until the very end and then ended up in OT where we ultimately lost by 5.  The disappointing thing was not that we lost both games, but that we really should have won both.  Day two, the team regrouped and had two dominant wins.  While we didn't win the tournament by a long shot, the team had lots of fun hanging out together off the court and had tons to be proud of over the season. The team ended up playing 54 games over the season and ended with a record of 42W/12L and the majority of those wins were against A level teams. It was a great season!

Now on to this week's recap.  To be honest, this past week has left a bit like mailing it in.  We were all recovering from the tournament weekend and the time change with daylight savings.  We were all also just counting down the days until Spring Break, which started Thursday for the girls and I and Friday for Merrick.  Jeremy, unfortunately, doesn't really get a Spring Break, but he will be taking next Friday off so we can do something fun together.

Since Jeremy is gone during the week, we decided to make the most of our day together yesterday by heading up to Mt. Hood for some sledding. It snowed most the time we were up there but we still had a great time...up until the last two minutes, where the snow turned into more of a blizzard and the girls ended up in tears from being too cold.  Once safely back in the car and warmed up, I think everyone decided it was, all in all, a great time.

More Spring Break fun to come in the week ahead.  Millie is also having the Spring Break of her dreams with her cousin dog, Gigi, visiting for 2 weeks while her family is out of town.  Some of the rest of us might not be so excited about some of the consequences of having her here but the dogs are definitely having a blast.

New Life- Week 101 (State Tournament)

This week has been all about the first of two state tournaments for Merrick's basketball team.  Last year there was a "divorce" with the state tournament organizers and so now we have a Bend state tournament and a Salem state tournament.  You have to qualify for each individually by playing in different tournaments.  Even though the tournament didn't start until Friday, it was certainly the focus of the week as we waited for the schedule to be released and then talked about the different teams we would face.

This weekend was different too because this is the first tournament where the girls didn't come to any of the games because of how the schedule played out with multiple late nights.  We are lucky to have Nana and Papa nearby to step up and help with the girls.  While we definitely missed them, it was nice in a kind of high pressure situation to just focus on Merrick and have that time with him.  The girls also didn't seem to mind too much either.  They got happy meals and both got a haircut from Nana.  Carrigan just got a trim but Elsie had been asking for a while and got a bit more trimmed off.

As for the tournament, the Friday night game was interesting.  We faced a team who's "big" was bigger than Merrick.  That has never happened before!  Luckily Merrick was more athletic and focused and he had no trouble playing against him.  We ended up winning on Friday night by like 30 points.

Saturday's games where tougher.  The team we faced first ended up being the team we played in the championship today.  We underestimated them and didn't show up for the first half of the game. We had a tough fight to come back and win by 6.  The second game was also a tough fight for parts but we ended up winning by 13.  Today, as I mentioned, we had to play the team from Saturday morning (North Marion) after they battled back to the championship game through the "play back" bracket.  We lead for the entire game, but did let them get close a few times and it felt tight and scary the whole time.  We ended up beating them by 6 again to win the championship.  Our boys are state champions!  In addition to shirts, the boys got championship rings.  They were pretty stoked about that. Oh! One other thing, the championship game had a play by play announcer so each of the players got announced at the start of the game and anytime they scored.  Merrick thought that was pretty cool!

Next weekend we will travel to Bend for state tournament number 2.  This one will be a little different. In Salem we qualified to play in the "B bracket" since we are technically a B team, even though we have played in more A team tournaments than B team.  For Bend, we qualified for both A and B team brackets.  We have decided to play up in the A bracket so we will have a fight ahead of us.  I'll keep you posted!